


Happiness in the Water

by endeni



Series: History [4]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Blanket Permission, Incest, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Post-Movie(s), Spoilers, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 09:38:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5823649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endeni/pseuds/endeni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben, making amends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happiness in the Water

**Author's Note:**

> A sequel to [Illuminating the Future](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5629384).

 

**1.**

Sitting in a corner of the ship's cargo hold, Ben is looking down at his bound hands.  
Resistance soldiers are sitting all around him, tired, some of them injured, all impatient to get home. The air is heavy with the smell of sweat and a lingering stench of burning and exhaust.  
A few feet from his seat, his master is tending to an Abednedo with a deep gash on his tight. Ben can feel him use the Force to close the wound, can feel the burn of his power, like a bright light just out of the corner of his eyes.  
Ben tries to meditate, tries to calm his feelings as his master told him to. Tries to focus on something other than the cold metal on his wrists.  
His master had apologized when he had put him in restraints, but Ben had understood perfectly the necessity for it.  
Every member of the Resistance must have had someone whose death Ben's been directly or indirectly responsible for. A relative, a friend, an old acquaintance. Someone they knew. Someone they loved.  
He can feel the outraged, hostile stares on his skin. The hate.  
More than that, even bound and unarmed like he is now, he can sense their fear.  
He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, hard, until he can see nothing but the after-images of the cargo hold's lights. He reminds himself that fear is different from respect.

He thinks about his crude, blood-red lightsaber, still lying on the deck of the Order's flagship where he had dropped it when the Resistance had blown the ship up.  
He tells himself he would live all his life like a toothless, claw-less nexu if it would mean living in a world where he doesn't have to face his master in battle.

_Ben._ A gentle voice in his head. A wave of reassurance.  
  
Yes.  
He's no longer Kylo of the Knight of Ren.  
Ben Solo, that's who he is now. Who he is again. A name that will always remind him of the father he killed, the atrocities he committed.

_I want you to try picturing the place where you have been happiest_ , his master says to him. _Can you do that, my boy?_

Dutifully, Ben pushes away his bleak thoughts and tries to focus.  
He tries to conjure up that mosquito-infested planet, before things when south. Thinks about the mud and the swamps. Imagines the silhouette of his master against the cloudy sky, his shadow rippling over the waters.  
Except, the image in his head keeps flickering and coming apart.

With a tearing noise, the ship comes out of hyperspace.  
Before he's ever able to set his eyes on her, Ben can feel his mother's presence.  
Their ship is hovering over the landing bay of the base, the pilot waiting for people to get out of her way. Ben can feel her frustrated thoughts leaking into his mind. And, underneath, the same steady, slow sound he knew so well as a boy. Only now, rather than the gentle flow of a river, it feels more like the inexorable crushing of waves upon the shore, over and over.  
Water, wearing away stone.  
Finally, the ship touches the ground.  
Ben looks at his master for permission. He gets a nod in response.  
He takes a breath, stands up, disembarks.

General Leia Organa is waiting at the bottom of the ramp. Around them, people come and go, in a frenetic hive of activity.  
Ben climbs down the ramp.  
Suddenly, he's afraid to look her in the eyes. Afraid to see the old fear. To see disgust.  
Ben makes himself take those last few steps, his long legs making the distance shorter than he'd like, until he's standing in front of her. Until he's looking at her.  
Behind the power and energy that radiate from her, she looks older.  
Much older than sixteen years of separation warrant.  
And he's been the one to put the gray in her hair, the lines on her face. Just like he did with his uncle. With his _father_.  
Her face is a jumble of complex expressions warring with one another.  
She looks at him, taking in his soggy hair, the clothes spattered with blood, his soot-stained, scarred face.  
Ben makes himself stay still under her perusal, waiting for her reaction.  
For her to slap him or scream at him. For her to just _do something_.  
He is good at taking pain and punishment. He would take whatever she has to deliver.  
Behind him, his master's reassuring presence, approaching.

“You brought him home to me,” his mother says at last, her voice unsteady. “ _Thank you_ , Luke.”

  
**2.**

He's sitting in a windowless white room, his manacled hands resting on top of a white, bare table, being debriefed by his mother and her command staff. His master is standing close by, his back against a wall, listening carefully.  
Ever since he had taken Luke Skywalker's hand on that ship, his master has never been farther than a few feet from him.

They want to know where General Hux could be hiding himself, what his next move will be, how many forces at his disposal, ships, soldiers, planetary bases, connections.

Ben thinks of they way he himself interrogated and tortured prisoners. Because that's what he is now: a defector, a prisoner.  
He counts himself lucky.

He tells them it's not Hux they should be worrying about: he's devoted to the cause but not completely unbalanced.  
The Knights of Ren, on the other hand, are- were loyally fanatical to Snoke and have overseeing powers within the Order. They're also borderline Force-sensitive. Without their leader, they are an unknown quantity.  
They could either drift aimlessly, like untethered kites, or become very dangerous, like combat dogs off their leash.

Then, he tells them everything else: planes, specs, battle formations, regime training, down to the tiniest detail, speculations, segments of overheard conversations.

By the time his mother calls a halt to the proceedings, Ben feels as if he's been up for twenty-four hours straight.  
He probably did.  
Ben says: “There's one last thing.”  
He's so tired.  
“Something I will say only to the girl, Rey,” he looks at his master. “And to you.”  
His master looks at his sister for a long moment before nodding.

The girl enters the room, his grandfather’s blade hanging from her belt, and Ben can't help touching his cheek, the mark she gave him. A tangible sign his guilt.  
He closes his eyes and decides to just blurt it out.  
“I know the truth about you,” he says. “Snoke told me, what he did to you. What he planned to do.”  
Her eyes turns into ice.  
“Ben, what to do you mean?” his master asks, his voice deceptively calm.  
Ben takes a breath. Calm your mind, he tells himself.  
“She's an experiment,” he says. “Supreme Leader Snoke created her. I don't know precisely how. She's some sort of clone,” he looks at her now, at the outrage in her eyes, “from the hand you lost during the battle of Cloud City," he looks back at his master. "When you lost your first lightsaber.”  
My grandfather's blade.  
“So, you see, it was meant to be your weapon all along,” Ben says to the girl.  
Thorough the horror in her eyes, Ben can see that she knows he's telling the truth.  
“You were meant to join him into the dark side,” he says to her, “but someone snatched you from under Snoke's nose. One of my mast- of Luke's apprentices.”  
He lowers his eyes.  
“One of the students you killed,” she points out.  
“Yes,” he says. He doesn't dare look into his master's face.  
He looks at the girl instead. “After your disappearance, Snoke focused all his attention on the Knight of Ren. And on me.” _As a consolation price_ , he thinks wearily. “I killed her, the apprentice, before she could tell Luke about you. But I couldn't find you. No-one could.”  
She's silent for a long time, his master with her.  
“Why should we believe you?” she asks at last, her voice pained.  
“You don't,” Ben says, he puts his face into his hands. “You just need to run a DNA test.”  
“Why haven't you told your mother?” asks his master. His voice old and weary and hopeful all at once.  
“Because it wasn't the Resistance's business.” he answers with a sigh. “Because I owe you both a debt that can never be repaid.”

After, his master brings him to his quarters, frees his wrists. He doesn't say a word to him. Ben drops onto the bed, exhausted.

He wakes up with a scream in the middle of the night. His hands still shaking with the sensation of his lightsaber impaling itself into his father's torso.  
His master perches by his bedside, cool metal fingers caressing Ben's hair away from his eyes. _Shush, my boy._  
Like a child, Ben clings to him.  
Just for a moment, he tells himself, as he tries to chase away the terror, the shame. Just enough for Ben to get back to sleep.  
_Thank you_ , his master sends to him, as he's closing his eyes, _for telling me about Rey._

  
**3.**

The next morning, his master takes him again to the white room.  
They make him go through every detail one more time, checking for inconsistencies, asking him to clarify a particular point, possibly testing him and the reliability of the information he is giving them.  
Not that he can blame them.  
He keeps answering, to the best of his abilities. Tempering his impatience, making himself into a model of compliance.

It's night and Ben is back to his quarters, the quarters he's sharing with his master.  
“I'm leaving tomorrow,” his master says, as he's unlacing his boots. “We have to deal with what's left of the Order.”  
Ben averts his eyes. “And I am to stay here, right?”  
_Of course. They don't trust me, how could they?_  
“We know their retreat point now,” his master leaves the boots on the floor and, barefoot, comes sit on the bed near him. “Better to act fast before our information, _your_ information, becomes outdated.”  
Ben bites his lip.  
“I'll be back soon,” his master adds. He puts a hand on Ben's shoulder.  
_Don't go_ , Ben wants to ask. _Not now that I found you again._  
“Ben,” his master starts to say, taking back his hand like he's just realized- He looks at him with searching, uncertain eyes. “Do you- Even after all these years?”  
Ben smiles sadly. He turns his head away, looks at the floor. His gaze is captured by his master's bare feet. The delicate arch of his insteps. Angrily, he shuts his eyes.  
“My boy…. I'm-” A sigh. “I'm too old. We-”  
“I don't care what our blood says.” Ben interrupts, his voice cracking. “You're all I ever wanted. Ever since I was fifteenth.”  
_And tomorrow I could lose you._  
A long pause.  
Ben's heart, beating too fast in his chest. Thump-thump-thump. Deafening him.  
_I'm sorry_ , Ben wants to say.  
Then, he feels his master's hand covering his own.  
“So be it,” his master says.  
_What_ , Ben thinks.  
His metal fingers are threading through Ben's hair now, gently coaxing him. “Ben, look at me,” his master's soft voice.  
Ben does.  
Almost tentatively, his master leans forward, pressing a chaste kiss against his mouth.  
The touch is a shock. Ben lays still for a long moment, savoring it, half in disbelief.  
_I tried resisting once_ , his master's voice in his head, _look where it got us all_.  
Then, lips and teeth and tongue. Ben's arms circling his master's shoulder in a tight embrace.  
“I'm going to take a page out of own my book,” his master whispers to him. _Embracing my dark side._  
Hands, sneakingly unbuttoning and unlacing. Sliding underneath clothes, caressing.  
Ben's heart is exploding through his chest.  
Yes, Ben thinks half-hysterically. _That's what I am, am I?_  
Half-dressed on the bed, suddenly he feels weirdly vulnerable, exposed.  
“Wait- Ben, did you ever?” his master hesitates, pulling back.  
“I know how it works,” Ben's too-fast response. “ _Please._ ” Hungrily, he leans into another kiss.  
His master stops him. Takes him by the shoulders, looks at his for the longest time. And, just when Ben is getting lost into his master's blue eyes, starts to kiss him. Gentle kisses, pressed over his scarred cheek and forehead. His nose, his eyelids. A kiss against every mole. “You're my dear boy.” A kiss. Another. And another.  
Skin, sliding against skin, they map each other's bodies with with mouth and fingers. Ben can feel each touch burning through his skin.  
“My dear Ben.”  
It's all a shock: the wetness of his master's mouth, the sparse, coarse hair on his master's chest and the warm, smooth skin underneath. So warm.  
Ben caresses the line of a nipple. His master shivers.  
“And I… I'm just an old fool in love.”  
They fall over the sheets.  
_Not old_ , Ben says with every kiss, every caress. _Not a fool._  
_Missed you_ , Ben thinks. _Love you._  
He tries to commit everything to memory, every detail. Until the warmth and the pressure in his mind become impossibly strong.  
Like a HoloNet tune, the volume turned up to eleven, the song getting permanently stuck into your head afterwards.  
Frantic, Ben slides his hands over his master's back, grabs his buttocks, takes him in hand.  
_Slowly, slowly, my boy._ His master, whispering to his mind. Kissing his jaw, his neck. Touching him in return. Controlled, languid, unbearably warm.  
Then, his master is bending down, taking Ben into his mouth.  
A translucent shine, a terrible heat. Enveloping everything, reflecting on his master's eyes that become a light electric blue, shocking him.  
_My boy_ , Ben hears. And: _Mine, you're mine._

Afterwards, they lay on the bed, Ben halfway sprawled over his master, their legs entwined, their bodies still coiled around one another.  
Ben closes his eyes, buries his face against his master's neck, inhaling his scent, luxuriating in the warmth of his body.  
Trying not think about tomorrow, about his master going off to fix the mess Ben left behind.  
Trying not to think about being _left_ behind.

  
**4.**

They're not attack dogs, Ben thinks. They're cornered, rabid creatures. His master is facing battle and Ben is here, looking at holographic charts, staring at green points of lights flicker away one after the other.  
He's sitting in a corner of the room, trying not to get in the way, feeling powerless.  
Yet he can't make himself leave.  
Ben looks at his mother giving frantic orders, listens to the chaos of reports coming in. Suicidal attacks and massive losses.  
He imagines ships set into collision curse. Explosions illuminating the night of space. Ships, falling out of the sky.  
He looks at himself, at his hands, and can't believe what they did the night before.  
Can't believe what's happening now.

Communications with the troops break, only long stretches of static coming in.  
The room is saturated with dread.  
Ben can feel the fear and the anger mount inside him and desperately tries to quench them. Exploding in one of his fits of rage would benefit no one right now.

_Please, come back to me_ , Ben thinks.

And then, impossibly, Luke Skywalker's presence blooms into his mind, straight out of hyperspace.  
  
Ben looks at his mother in confirmation, he sees her widen her eyes.  
He bolts though the door. The two guards they appointed him springing into step with him as he runs to the landing pad, his gait made awkward and uncoordinated by his bound hands.  
Just as he watched it rise from the base and vanish in the sky, now he looks up to see the Falcon approaching its descent, then touching the ground.  
And, right after the Falcon, the rest of the Resistance ships, dropping out of hyperspace in turn, illuminating the night sky.  
Ben can't remember how much time has passed since he could breath so freely.

The ship's door opens and Chewbacca disembarks with a howl, a crude bondage around his head. Then comes out the girl. And her stormtrooper friend.  
He hears the man chat a parsec a minute. “-hell of a Jedi Master!” he's saying with his wide smile. “Did you see that, when he threw the ship through that hole? How he cut down those black-caped bastards?”  
A manacled Hux comes out after them. Ben notices that his hair doesn't look so perfectly coiffed any more. “How he convinced Hux-stick-up-his-ass here to surrender afterwards? Oh, man!”  
“Yes, Finn, I was there too, you know?” The girl's lips are stretched into an indulgent smile. “Helping him do those things.”  
Finally, his master comes through the door, his robes billowing in the wind.  
“Yesss!” the trooper answers with another exuberant smile. “You were a-ma-zing!”  
Ben tunes out their chatter.  
His master sees him, smiles.  
A beautiful, tired smile. He climbs down the ramp to greet him.  
Ben can sense the weariness and the regret rolling off him. His master would never take a life if he weren't made to.  
He desperately want to kiss his pain away.  
He doesn't dare, of course. Not here in the open.

Except, his master approaches him. And he's putting his hands on Ben's shoulders, gathering him into his arms.  
Ben's bound arms lay awkwardly trapped between their bodies but he grabs fistful of his master's tunic and drops his head on his master's shoulder and just holds on tight.  
Ben hears Hux screaming as he is taken away.  
"Traitor!"  
He can sense the hostility in the people around him.  
He doesn't care.  
For a moment, the rest of the world feels so distant.  
His past is beyond him and his future in his grasp.  
_I'm here, my boy. Ben._  
_You came back to me_ , Ben thinks. So loud everyone must be able to hear it.

Then, his mother's presence.  
His master suddenly pulls away, looking behind Ben's shoulders.  
  
As she comes forward, his mother puts a hand on Ben's arm, looking at him in the eyes for a moment. Then she greets her brother with an embrace.  
Ben feels like whatever impossible, inevitable thing is between him and his master must be written on his skin, for everyone to see.  
Could she have seen?

  
**5.**

The last battle has been won, the Third Republic born out of the ashes of the last one.

Ben goes to trial.  
Like every enemy officer the Resistance has captured. Those who didn't blow themselves up. Terrorists, who attacked the state, gutting it, destroying its infrastructure of government, destroying whole worlds, killing millions of people.  
The common troops, they go into deconditioning treatments.

He's led into the court with dozens of others men and women, their hands bound and under heavy guard.  
Then, he feels the smallest flicker through the Force. He sees the last surviving member of the Knights of Ren managing to escape from his guards and fling himself to the podium where his mother and his master are.

_No._

Ben feels an overwhelming rage enveloping him.  
He doesn't see the guards raising their blasters or his uncle putting himself in front of his mother, a hand on the hilt of his lightsaber. He doesn't think, he just reaches for the man through the Force and _squeezes_.  
Drawing the air away from his lungs.  
Until he's collapsing on the ground, hands trying to grasp at his throat, uselessly.  
“ _Ben!_ ” his uncle roars.  
Ben looks at his master's face and lets go.  
The man lays twitching on the floor.  
Silently, slowly, Ben reaches his place on the dock and sits. Back straight, staring right ahead, bound hands lying in his lap.  
The other prisoners quickly take their seats after him.

He killed Snoke for less, Ben thinks. Too bad he did so too late.

When the time comes he doesn't ask for mercy.  
He admits it, he's absolutely responsible for all the atrocities he's been accused of.

Except, his mother, regal in her fine white cloak, stands up and it's the newly appointed Chancellor of the Third Republic asking to be heard, asking for lenience for the man who killed Supreme Leader Snoke, betrayed the First Order and provided the Resistance with information that revealed itself to be crucial to their final victory over the Order.  
Unashamedly, she asks for lenience for her own son, one of the few family members she has left now.  
The annihilation of Aldeeran is left unmentioned but weights heavily in the minds all those who listen. Just as do the five planets in the Hosnian system the Starkiller Base wiped out from existence.  
Then, his master stands up as well, saying he'll vouch for Ben, take personal responsibility. Pleading the court to let him _take_ that responsibility.

So it is that Ben Solo escapes lifetime imprisonment.  
Because, in spite of everything, all the deaths he is responsible for, the heroes of the Resistance love him.  
And the court can't deny its heroes.  
His family name, turning out to be not a prison of unreachable expectations, but a protective shield.  
In the end, Ben manages to get away with what is basically home arrest, released into his uncle's custody. Into the custody of the man he loves. Not much of a punishment at all.  
Not at all what he deserved.

  
**6.**

They retreat to Ahch-To, his master's water planet. To its temple ruins, its oceans and its islands.

Rey visits often, to complete her training. And to be with Luke.  
One day not so long ago Ben would have been fiercely jealous of the attention his master is showing to her pupil. He finds he couldn't deny them that connection now.

His mother comes too.  
Infrequently at first. Then, on the HoloNet they see her losing her last elections.  
They start seeing more of her then.  
Ben knows this is his fault too, that the citizen of the Republic punished her for her ties with him, for taking a stand for him in court.

One night, Ben overhears her and his master talk.  
“-well needed break, perhaps. Sometimes, I feel like I've been doing this my whole life.”  
“That's because you have.” Ben can hear the affection behind his master's wry tone.  
She sighs. “There's still so much to be done, to rebuilt...”  
Ben is about to leave, to give them their privacy when-  
“I swear, Leia, I have never-” Ben freezes behind the porch. He can imagine, can almost see, the look of deep anguish on his master's face. “ _Before_ , I have never...”  
He can hear the guilt. And the resigned determination underneath.  
“I know,” Ben can picture his mother's sad smile in his mind.  
_I imagine that was probably the problem_ , he hears like a whisper. His mother's thoughts, sent over with more force than necessary by her untrained but powerful mind.  
“Luke, you're the most noble, self-less man I've ever know,” she says. “You and Ben are the only family I have left. You will always have my love.”  
Ben brings a hand to his eyes, feeling the wetness of the tears trapped between his lashes.  
“Not the only ones,” he hears his master say.

Soon, there are other apprentices. Soon, there's a school again, like it once was.  
Ben counts his victories by every apprentice who becomes a Jedi Knight. He balances those lives with the lives of the apprentices he killed, all those years ago.

One day, his master asks Ben if he would like to build another lightsaber.  
“I could teach how to make a proper one,” Luke says “You could join me and the others in battle practice.”  
It's a kind, trusting offer. Too kind.  
There's a part of him, there will always be a part of him, that still dreams of the dark sometimes, of its power.  
Except, he reminds himself, he was never really the one with the power, the one in control. That had always been an illusion.  
Ben stays silent for a long moment.  
“I don't know if I'd trust myself with a weapon again,” he says then, “I don't know that you should either.”  
“Of course I do, my boy,” says his master. “But the decision is yours to make.”  
“If you think I could be of help-”  
“You know that's not how it works. You have to be ready, it has to be your choice.”  
Ben thinks of Rey, fighting with his grandfather's lightsaber.  
He thinks that, no, this wouldn't be a good idea at all.

Ben spends his days meditating and watching his master teach. He never touches a lightsaber again.

After a while, he starts helping him. Handling the very young ones, levitating stones and making beautiful, flamboyant shows using the Force. He enjoys making them laugh in amazement.  
Then, as they grow older, he start running them through katas, training them in unarmed hand-to-hand techniques and force healing.

The nights, he spends in his master's arms.  
No, not much of a punishment at all.

**  
7.**

One spring morning, his master dies. Peacefully, in his sleep.  
Ben buries him on his island.

And a few days later, light years away, Ben's mother follows him. Together in death like in birth.

Ben has her buried next to her brother.

He goes visit his master and his mother every morning.  
He stays there, the cold wind lashing out against him, thinking of the third stone that's missing.  
His father's grave was the Starkiller Base and it was destroyed when the Resistance blew up the base.

One morning, he finds a woman crouched down in front of the polishes stones, arranging fresh, colorful flowers.  
She hears him and gets up, turning towards him.  
Her hair is still tightly tied back in three neat, small buns, a strand of gray now running from her right temple. She's as beautiful as ever. For a moment, she looks so much like his own mother it takes Ben's breath away.  
Then she scowls at him and the moment passes.

“Grand Master Skywalker,” he salutes her with a nod as he approaches, “I hear you're my new guardian.”  
“Don't get excited,” she answers him, dispassionate. “I still hate you.”  
“Yes. I imagine.”  
“You don't,” she straightens her clothes, cleaning them of any remaining grain of dirt and coil of grass.  
“My whole life... I've been trapped in a prison of my own making, counting the days on the wall, waiting for someone who was never going to come back,” she turns to look at the ocean. “And you… you threw your family away. Your own father. You killed him.”  
Silence, broken only by the whistling of the wind.  
“I will never forgive you for that.”  
“I wouldn't ask you to,” he says in a whisper.  
“But then… then, you gave me back my family.”  
Ben looks at her.  
“Is that why you did it?” he asks.  
“For some reasons, they still loved you.”  
_Yes_ , he thinks, _no-one is more surprised than me._  
“And I owed it to the both of them,” she indicates the two graves with a nod. “And to Han.”  
A familiar pang makes its way through Ben's chest.  
“They loved you too,” he says.  
A weary smile spreads over her lips.  
They stay like that, looking at the tombstones in front of them and the ocean beyond them.  
“He loved this place. All this water,” Ben says.  
A reluctant nod. “The desert will do that to you.”  
“This world-” Ben presses a hand against his eyes, “I saw it before ever setting foot on it. The first time I met you, I forced an image of it from your head. You-” he doesn't say anything else for a long minute.  
“You were his best student. The one he was most proud of. The daughter he could never have.”  
“And you are the only man he wouldn't go to war with,” she says, not unkindly. “He would have rather let the galaxy rot than do that.”  
A wry smile. Than a nod. “He nearly did. In the end, you were his hope, I was his damnation.”  
And now, of all our family, we're the only two left.

Ben is sitting on a cliff, looking down at the rumbling water, letting the wind caress his hair. He reaches out to the Force in the old exercise his master taught him.  
_Picture the place where you have been happiest._  
Ben closes his eyes.  
The after-image of the waves in front of him keeps lingering in his mind. The blue of the ocean merging with the sky. And the vibrant greens of the island.  
In the distance, he hears the children calling him. _Master! Master Ben!_


End file.
